Mega. Things A-Flapping. Mysteries. And Violence!

Wow, a lot happened last night before I went to bed (at 4 A.M. Whoops!) I had more characters lvl up!

Oh yeah! I'm rocking the house with ten HP!

And the game kept stressing that I was near Kuto's Well. Never told me why, but if I came within 30 feet of Kuto's Well, it lept out of it;s chair and yelled- "Hey! Kuto's Well! It's right behind you!" Well, I can take a hint after it's been shoved in my face ten times- I went to look at Kuto's well.

That's a- safe looking hole in the ground situated right where children play- in the dark.

This was after I had fully mapped out the entire map area that contained Kuto's Well. I mean- hey, I have work to do.

On the whole I really like the images they have when they put the small box up to give greater detail. Things are more realistic, more colorful, more detailed. And while this doesn't look like any ladder or well I've ever seen, it gives a proper mood to the proceedings.

So I sneaks my way down the ladder in the well...

And at the bottom I find this. Looks like a secret door to me, dunnit?

And then I am presented with this map of the area. The whole, entire map.

Which leads me to the weirdest part of this whole game. I understand that it does this on the PC version as well. But when I enter an area, I am given an entire map of the area- sans doors or labels of what a building holds within it. How does THAT work? my "mapping" requires me to walk around and hunt down doors so I can place them on the already provided walls. In New Phlan, I also went through and added labels of what each building was. If I showed you my map, you'd not be able to read it :)

I warned you- I. Told.You. You'd. Be. Sorry!

So mapping is pretty easy and pretty weird. Anyway. I get down into the area below the well, and I am presented with this-

After all, they tell you in creative writing classes- "Don't tell-  show."

And I thinks to myself- hey, didn't I get a snippet of information in the monster meeting grounds (where I was hiding in the shadows before they could see me) that said 'thieves use the catacomb as their hideout'? Yes, I sure did! But then, before I could really make a move-

Oh no they di'int!

However, rather than take me to a combat, or hit one of my guys for some unavoidable damage- nothing else happens. I can continue mapping and exploring as if nothing at all happened. So I did :)

I wonder what journal entry this would have been in the PC version?

Gad, he's an ugly s.o.b. ain't he? Sho ain't human, I can tells you dat. I like his ears though.

Norris the Gray and his merry band of thieves leap out of the shadows and confront my merry band of adventurers! I am given the option of surrendering, or of leaping into combat. Given the fact that I am deep in monster territory, and given the fact that "The Boss" seems to be in charge of the monsters in this area, and given the fact that "The Boss" does not like us at all, I thinks to myself that surrender probably isn't the smartest choice of action. So I choose to fight for my life!

When I saw what I was faced with, I thought I was toast. 6 goblin guards, Norris the Gray, and an ogre, my heart sinks. However, my fighter/magic users 'sleep'ed the goblins right quick and boom, they were out of the equation. My one magic user kept zapping the ogre with a wand of magic missiles (gad, I wonder how many charges are left in that thing!) until he went down, and between my fighter and my fighter/cleric, Norris fell pretty quickly as well. Then we simply walked around the sleeping goblins and cut their throats with our daggers. Tout de Suite!

After we divvied up the XP, the GP, and the one piece of actual loot, we discovered that Norris had secreted a letter upon his person. He and his band of thieves were to head to the port and follow the orders of the ogres there. However, Norris had written his reply on the back (dunno if he sent it, since he still had it with him. We must have disemboweled him and force fed him his bloody length of colon before he had a chance to pop it in the post). 

Aside from the fact that Norris appears to be a damned dirty hob/goblin, he also appears to have his head on straight (before we removed it from his neck)

But he does- did, excuse me- suffer from delusions of grandeur.

In the end I got enough XP to lvl up a character  or two, and I financed it by selling a metric busload of gems (well, 17 gems). Thins are looking up. And now that my 2 arena fighting magic users also have Magic Missile and Shocking Grasp... I think I'm going to go try those trolls again. I'll fill you in when I'm done, but I'll try not to make it a huge post like this one again :)